Wings are singed like Icarus to fall, what's left is a shadow of it all

So this is the rhythm of my days:

Wake up between 5:00 and 6:00, earlier on work days and later on the weekends. Do my morning stuff and head out for NIH.  If it's a work day, I'm carrying my backpack so I can have both my PC (which I use for work) and my Mac (which I use for life).  If it's a weekend or other non-work day, I just have my purse. I love that my Mac will fit in my purse.

I go through security at NIH, where I have my extended visitor's badge scanned and get let through the patient & visitor's gate. If it's a weekday, I drive up to the Clinical Center (building 10) and let the valet park the car. If it's a weekend, I drive around to the parking garage under the building, submit my car to a security inspection, and park.

Amusing note about Building 10: the half we're in is the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center. Mark Hatfield was an Oregon Senator. A piece of home.

I take the elevator up to the 3 NW inpatient unit, which is where Jay is staying.  His mom has been doing the night shift (although that will end when she goes home Tuesday), so I say hi to her, and to Jay's dad, if he's arrived before me.  He and I share the day shift.

Then it's a day of doctors and nurses popping in at what seem like (but probably aren't) random intervals.  Meds, both via IV and via pills, are administered. Food is ordered as Jay wants it. Jay goes between sleeping and sitting up to talk and connect. We walk around the ward as often as he can manage it.

On workdays, I'm doing my best to get whatever needs to be done that day done in between caregiving needs, the latter clearly taking precedence.  If I'm on deadline, I'll either stay in the hotel until I'm done and then come in to NIH, or I'll excuse myself to go out to the work carrells that are outside the ward at the atrium.

On non-workdays, I play on my computer or read. Yesterday, I spent the day working to reproduce Jay's cancer email distribution list in my Gmail, which was more of a challenge than I anticipated. Today, I have a Genius Bar appointment, which will take me out of NIH for a while in the late morning.

Lunch is in one of the 3 cafeterias in the building, unless it's a weekend, when there's only one cafeteria open.  The food is decent, but not great.  My joy during the week is the choice between sushi (smoked and cooked [e.g., tempura rolls], nothing raw) and the Austin Grill outpost that works kind of like a Chipotle.

Then, somewhere between 4 and 6, I'll say goodbye to Jay and whoever is still in the room and head out to a quick dinner and then back to the hotel room.  I'm usually utterly exhausted and get to bed early.

And start all over again.

We sometimes catch a window, a glimpse of what's beyond

I've been reading (or, more accurately, re-reading) books about grief and loss lately.  These include Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Ghost Rider by Neil Peart, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and Grace and Grit by Ken Wilber.  That last is the only one I haven't finished; it hits far too close to home, and I have to read it in tiny, tiny sips to keep from being overwhelmed.

The one of these that hits me squarely on is The Year of Magical Thinking.  Joan Didion's year was the year after her husband's death; mine has been the past year, holding tenaciously onto every scrap of hope for Jay, having my head pounded into the pavement every time that hope turns out to be misplaced.

Look, I know that I joined my life to that of a dead man.  This is not a surprise. But as they say, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. Knowing intellectually what was going to happen is a very different thing to being hit in the heart over and over and over again.

I love this man beyond reason, as it should be. And when he is gone, whenever that future should occur, I will grieve for a very long time, then slowly pick up my life and move on.  I will survive, because that's what I do.

But holy fuck does the now suck.

I discovered quite by accident a number of years ago that I'm good at grief.  At a time when I truly thought I wasn't good at anything, it was a kind of pointed gift to find that I was good at something.

My dreams these past few nights have been full of loss and promise, of pain and of love, of frustration and of triumph. My subconscious is clearly trying to prepare me for whatever future lies ahead, good, bad, wonderful, awful - whatever.

Right now, I'm just scared, angry, and full of love.

Another game of putting things aside, as if we'll come back to them sometime

Lots of catching up to do here, so let's see what I can get done while I'm waiting at the airport for Jay's flight to get in.

We've spent most of this year so far getting Jay ready for the experimental treatment he's going into this week at NIH.  Lots of travel, a bout of surgery and the recovery from it, and waiting waiting waiting.

I want so badly to be able to shut out the rest of life, to simply knuckle down to the things that we need to do to keep going on this treatment path.  But of course life isn't that simple nor is it that cooperative.  So we both continue to juggle with hands that get less deft every day.

Two things that are going on right now are both hard for me to deal with.

The first is the stark reality that Jay is dying, a little bit every day. It's visible now, in his energy levels, in his ability to simply function throughout a day. He's slipping further down that slide to the end of his life.

The second is something I've known for almost a year, and seems laughably obvious in retrospect. Jay & I are experiencing two very different paths in our relationship.  I'm a deeply sentimental person to start with, and am taking that trait along with me through our days.  I do my best to remember the sound of his laughter, the sharp edge of his snark, the beloved sound of his voice, the warmth of his love, the sweetness of his touch.  All of these things I can take with me into the future without him, to hold to my heart as balm once he's gone.

Jay is in the opposite place. He's living very much in the now, because now is all he has. The future has no meaning. He will not be carrying any memories forward once he's gone.  What he has now is all he has.

I remember vividly the moment when this became obvious to me.  It was last May when we were both briefly in Santa Fe, and we met with the friends he was traveling with for a quick snack and a quick hello.  As we sat in the restaurant, I was rubbing his back, and realized that I was trying to memorize how his back felt through his aloha shirt, and also realized that there was no equivalent action for him.

Every day is my stock for the future. Every day is Jay's permanent now.

Through all of the nonsense this month, I've been going through anxiety medication adjustments.  The meds I am currently on shut my emotional processing down completely.  I can feel day-to-day, but I can't process any grief.  I can't cry, even at the few things in the world that are guaranteed to make me cry no matter what.

As Jay comes back into DC, I'm in the process of tapering off this med, which is leaving me ready to burst into endless tears at the drop of a hat.

I fear this will be the way the rest of Jay's life is for me - tears and memories.

Always fighting the storm, afraid to suffer the wound

So many of my conversations these days, both real and virtual, revolve around the concept of acceptance.

So here's my take on the whole acceptance thing.

I know that Jay will die, as everyone I know will die.  On that level, I have perfect acceptance of what's going to happen.

I am also in total denial that this could happen soon.  Even that reality that we're taking him next week into treatment that has only a ghost of a chance of succeeding, and that his tumor growth rate is such that if the treatment doesn't succeed he'll be dead sooner than later, can't penetrate that wall of denial.

I am angry beyond reason to lose the love of my life, even though I knew coming into this that was the most likely, nearly inevitable outcome.

The thought of living the rest of my life without Jay is a gaping wound in my heart and my soul, one which will never fully heal.

And yet ... I live every day in the acceptance that this could be the last good day we have together. I live every day in the acceptance that I will be in his life long after he is gone from it, helping to support his daughter and her mother, hopefully being part of his larger family. I live every day in the full knowledge that we're slowly, piece by piece, taking his life apart, planning for the time he will be gone so that those of us who are left don't have to do that work in grief and pain.

And yet again ... the wall of denial is strong, and it's utterly based in fear.

And I accept that.

Heroines in an ancient film called the flame of the west

Things are really rough for me right now.

The combination of the change in Jay's timeline and my parents' issues are overwhelming enough.

But relationships I thought were simple have become complicated, and relationships that were already complicated have gotten even more so.  There's no smooth path in my life right now. Everything is bumpy, awkward, difficult, and uncomfortable.  I'm being pressed against the abrasive side of the world, scraped along until there's nothing left of me but a bleeding nub.

I'm full of grief and anger.  The anger I can handle, for the most part well (I hope). The medications I'm currently on for anxiety, however, are stopping me from processing the grief.  I can't cry, except in small intervals that don't provide much relief.  I can feel the grief backing up against the dam of the meds, and when it finally breaks, it's going to be ugly.

I'm already full of fear, and this just adds to that load.

I'm realizing how much denial I've been living in, and realizing that for me, living in denial looks a lot like living a normal life. WTF do I do with that?

I have a lot of support from friends and family, without which I would have fallen apart long ago.  Things are so bad for me right now that I'm actually looking forward to going to the coast by myself over the weekend before my birthday, as a time to sort things out a little, to breathe a little, to just sit and watch the ocean and be.  After finding Jay, I never thought I would look forward to alone time, since my whole life before him felt like nothing but alone time.  But here we are.

Here I am, pressed against the reality of the world.

Home, home, where I wanted to go

Back in Portland for a long weekend.

Family dinner tonight, then Jay's scan in the morning as well as my follow-up for my new anxiety med.  Then dropping Jay off at Orycon and hanging around til dinner time.

Then a relatively quiet weekend at my house while Jay plays at the con.

Then picking Jay up from Orycon to take him to Beaverton for a do at Powell's.

I'm already exhausted just thinking about it all.

Then we're back to Maryland on Tuesday, with a side trip to Rehoboth Beach, DE, because Jay wants to see a beach I love, and we don't have time to go down to the Outer Banks.  The rest of the week will be spent closing out as much of my parents' affairs as we can, followed by social time with friends and local fans.

Can't wait til we're back in Portland for the foreseeable future.

(Yes, I'm stuck on Coldplay's Clocks - I have no idea why, but there you are.)

The lights go out and I can't be saved, tides that I tried to swim against

Remember how I said September sucked? Well, you would think that I would learn from that, and not challenge the universe.  But apparently that lesson didn't sink in, because October was even worse in many ways.

The worst of all of it was having my dad have a stroke while I was in the midst of a cervical cancer scare.  I'm fine, and he's doing remarkably well, but the stress of the two events combined, plus the reality that we had to cancel our trip to England and the guilt I felt over Jay missing that once-in-a-lifetime trip, just about killed me.

OK November, how about we have a complete turn-around, where a month goes smoothly and pleasantly?

And December? Don't even try to piss me off.  You have no idea what you're in for if you try.